DOCSLIB.ORG

ON the BORDERS of ORAL and WRITTEN ART Carl

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ON the BORDERS of ORAL and WRITTEN ART Carl ON THE BORDERS OF ORAL AND WRITTEN ART Carl Lindahl Indiana University "Folklore and literaturen--the phrase links two fields of study, suggesting that they are similar enough to be meaningfully compared. Specialists in each field, however, tend to view the other with ignorance ar;d suspicion; as a result, "Studies" of folklore and literature more often resemble warfare than scholarship. The time has come to call a truce and seek out the reasons for the war. Even at the level of nomenclature a basic con- fusion exists. Both "folklore" and "literature" are vague terms which can be applied too broadly to allow for a useful comparison. "Folklore" denotes traditional forms of entertainment, such as ballads and folktales, but also includes unofficial customs, survival techniques, and beliefs current in any culture. "Literature" designates not only written art, but also anything that is written. Here I will set strict limits on both terms: this study deals exclusively with the artistic uses of folklore and literature. My purpose is to redefine the boundaries between oral and written narrative art. The problem of boundaries cuts far deeper than any dispute over the choice and meaning of a few key words. Folklorists and literary critics must share an equal measure of blame for the situation as it now stands, for as much as they have tried to establish oral entertainment as a category of art, both groups continue to approach the folktale, the ballad, and the oral epic as if these genres were distinctly different from art. In recent years this situation has grown dangerous: critics have paid lip service to the idea that oral and written art operate according to similar principles. Yet without informing their readers, the same critics have employed methods based on the assumption that the two processes have little in common. A look at the general trends of past scholarship will illustrate the problem. Historically, the study of folklore -and literature has focused on the identification of folklore in literature. Folklore in literature is a detective game: its object is to find traces of oral tradition buried in written art. It can be a worthy and demanding study in its own right--one which requires a thorough knowledge of both oral and written art traditions for its success. But it rests on an assumption that I challenge: that folklore and literature are so distinct that they can be clearly separated in a single text. Folklore in literature studies are instructive here becausethey show how past critics who claim to find both oral and written art in a single work distinguish between the two. There are two basic forms to this detective game, each with its own set of rules. A. The Populist-Historical Approach. Some scholars sift through literary records in the attempt to isolate songs, rhymes, and stories which originated among the "folk." Such work can be of great importance in establishing the existence of oral narratives at certain times and places in the past. Literary sources often are the only means of providing historical depth for recently recovered items of folklore. In such studies, the folklorist uses the artist as an informant and treats the work of art as an historical document. The text is simply a fact; the author's style is unimportant. Any other written record--a newspaper, the transcript of a witch trial, a diary--can be used in much the same way. This search for sources is literary only in the broadest sense--as the study of documents which are read. Insofar as "literature" denotes the study of art, source studies are not literary; they either ignore the artistic aspect of the source entirely, or look upon art as an impediment, a destructive force which corrupts the purity of the lore and which must be weeded out before the lore is considered authentic. B. The Elitist Approach. Other critics, who define art as the product of only the.greatest literary minds, approach the study of folklore in literature with an opposite bias. Here folklore is unearthed simply to 9 6 be discarded. Tradition is a lifeless skeleton which the true artist fills out with flesh and blood, and into which he breathes the life which justifies the critic's study. The artist transforms the contents of folklore and transcends the limits of tradition. With such an argument, Margaret Schlauch lauded the superiority of Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" to the folktale (AT 706) on which it is based: It remained for Chaucer, however, to add the greatest quality of all: to infuse into the quaint, traditional plot the pathos of sentient and suffering human beings; to elevate what was dead and conventional into the realm of art.l Schlauch made this pronouncement without having studied the style of a single oral tale. The folk artist was judged inferior without a trial. The two approaches outlined above are remarkably different in their biases, yet remarkably similar in their assumptions. They share a single major premise which can be reduced to the following equation: Literature - Art = Folklore Folklore is anything but art. Both approaches define written art as creative, varied, fluid, and individu- alistic, and characterize folklore as uninventive, repetitious, static, and communal. Since the late nineteenth century, growing numbers of folklorists have recognized that oral per- formances are artistic events which draw on the talents of gifted individuals .2 There are poor storytellers as surely as there are poor writers, but the best folk narrators, such as Eamon O'BU~C, Peig Sayers, Natal' ja 0. Vinokurova, ~suzsgnna~alk6, cannot be considered artless. Once we have accepted the premise that the balladeer and the taleteller are artists, just as the novelist and the academic poet are, we can seriously ask what distinguishes written from oral art. It is time to reexamine the scholarly tests which have set the folk and the literary artists at opposite ends of the creative rainbow. I shall now take a close look at the eight criteria most often used to build walls between oral and written art; then I shall try to determine if the boundaries marked by these walls match the contours of reality, or if they exist only in the minds of men whose thoughts have been compartmentalized by prejudice. 1. Definition 5 Medium: --Voice vs. -Print. Scholars traditionally have taken the most literal inter- pretation possible, and simply have assumed that litera- ture signifies a written artwork, while folklore refers to an oral one. This is the easiest means of dis- tinguishing between the two: it relies solely on physical evidence. In the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth,folk art apd illiteracy were considered insep- arable. The true teller of folktales was supposed to be innocent of print; the only means by which he got his art was from the mouths of others. Jakob Grimm, Cecil Sharp, and hundreds of others writing more recently (including Albert Lord) stand firm in their belief that true folk art belongs only to those who cannot read. In the eyes of the Historic-Geographic school, the printer was the enemy of folklore, and the Finns dis- credited all oral tales based on written ones. Kaarle ~rohn'sFolklore Methodology drew a strict line between folklore and literature, even in cases where printed versions had a demonstrable effect on the folk story: Now and then a hybrid form occurs in which it is extremely difficult to sort the literary aspect from the folk aspect. For lack of more genuine evidence this hybrid form may serve, but it must by all means be checked with great care and must be segregated temporarily . .3 Following the precepts of Krohn, Martti Haavio produced a tale type study for which he collected hundreds of oral versions. But he refused to consider a large number of tales drawn ultimately from print, even when the tellers could not read and had gotten their book stories from other oral tellers. As a result, ~aavio's study was a poor reflection of the tale as it actually existed in oral circulation. Within the Finnish school, only Walter Anderson considered both written and oral sources to be of equal value and scught to strike a balance in his studies so that both were seen to be inseparable, organically related partners in the oral expression of Western societies. And only since the studies of Phillips Barry began to register in readers' minds has it become clear that folklore is not a steady state, but is a process in which a work of written art can become a work of oral art with the passage of time. Folk narrators themselves do not distinguish their tales as written or oral in origin. The illiterate Hungarian narrator zsuzsgnna ~alkdretold "book talestt which had been read to her, transforming the originals into individually styled creations which met her community's standard for oral performance. 5 Mrs. ~alkb'snephew, GyGrgy ~ndrAsfalvi,was one of the, best-read members of the same community. Yet Andras- falvi's literacy did not impair his acknowledged talent as an oral artist.6 Studying folksingers in Maine, Eckstorm and Barry discovered that "the favorable results in tradition are in direct ratio to the intelligence and literacy of the singers. "7 Even in the most traditional societies, writing exerts its influence on oral performance. By ignoring this fact, scholars have separated two means of artistic communi- cation which in reality are closely intertwined. Most critics now admit that literary and oral artistry overlap; but there are many who hold that oral and written art are so fundamentally different that no individual can possibly master both forms of expression.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Orality in Writing: Its Cultural and Political Function in Anglophone African, African-Caribbean, and African-Canadian Poetry
    ORALITY IN WRITING: ITS CULTURAL AND POLITICAL FUNCTION IN ANGLOPHONE AFRICAN, AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN, AND AFRICAN-CANADIAN POETRY A Thesis submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Yaw Adu-Gyamfi Spring 1999 © Copyright Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, 1999. All rights reserved. National Ubrary Bib!iotheque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1 A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Vol", ,eferet1C8 Our file Not,e ,life,encs The author has granted a non­ L' auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, preter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L' auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permISSlOn. autorisation. 0-612-37868-3 Canada UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN College of Graduate Studies and Research SUMMARY OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi Department of English Spring 1999 -EXAMINING COMMITTEE: Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Where Now the Harp? Listening for the Sounds of Old English Verse, from Beowulf to the Twentieth Century
    Oral Tradition, 24/2 (2009): 485-502 Where Now the Harp? Listening for the Sounds of Old English Verse, from Beowulf to the Twentieth Century Chris Jones nis þær hearpan sweg, / gomen in geardum, swylce ðær iu wæron (2458b-59)1 There is no sound of the harp, delight in courts, as there once were The way to learn the music of verse is to listen to it. (Pound 1951:56) Even within an advanced print culture, poetry arguably never escapes the oral dimension. For Ezra Pound, whose highly intertextual epic The Cantos, so conscious of its page appearance, could only be the product of such a print culture, poetry was nevertheless “an art of pure sound,” the future of which in English was to be the “orchestration” of different European systems of sound-patterning (Pound 1973:33). Verbal orchestration is meaningless without auditors; it goes without saying that the notion of oral literature simultaneously implies the concept of aural literature. This much is also evident from the very beginning of Beowulf: Hwæt, we Gar-Dena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon . (“Listen, we have heard of the Spear-Danes in times past, of the glory of the people’s kings . ,” lines 1-2). While the conventionality of the opening might suggest the evocation of a formulaic idiom often associated with oral composition,2 the emphasis is clearly on aurality, on hearing a voice. Much work has been done in recent decades on the evidence in Old English written texts for a poetics that draws on compositional methods derived from an oral culture, either as it had survived into a period of widespread literacy, or as it was imagined to have once existed.3 This essay will not directly address that valuable rehabilitation of oral-formulaic theory into a more sophisticated understanding of early medieval scribal culture, although it will draw on it at times.
    [Show full text]
  • African Language Books for Children: Issues for Authors Viv Edwards University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eCommons@AKU eCommons@AKU Institute for Educational Development, East Africa AKU-East Africa January 2011 African language books for children: issues for authors Viv Edwards University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom Jacob Marriote Ngwaru Aga Khan University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://ecommons.aku.edu/eastafrica_ied Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Edwards, V., Ngwaru, J. M. (2011). African language books for children: issues for authors. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25(2), 123-137. Available at: http://ecommons.aku.edu/eastafrica_ied/14 Language, Culture and Curriculum ISSN: 0790-8318 (Print) 1747-7573 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlcc20 African language books for children: issues for authors Viv Edwards & Jacob Marriote Ngwaru To cite this article: Viv Edwards & Jacob Marriote Ngwaru (2012) African language books for children: issues for authors, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25:2, 123-137, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2011.629051 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2011.629051 Published online: 25 Oct 2011. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 201 View related articles Citing articles: 5 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rlcc20 Download by: [INASP - Tanzania] Date: 14 February 2017,
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of Literate Potential in Literature-Based and Skills-Based Classrooms Zhihui Fang, University of Florida
    The Development of Literate Potential The Development of Literate Potential in Literature-Based and Skills-Based Classrooms Zhihui Fang, University of Florida Abstract This study examined young children’s developing understand- ing of written discourse in two instructional settings: literature-based and skills-based. Forty-one first graders were each requested to dictate two “written” stories for others to read at the beginning and end of the school year. The 82 texts were analyzed for their cohesive harmony, conformity to the socioculturally-codified genre conventions, and use of specific written language features. Quantitative analysis revealed statistically sig- nificant increases in cohesion and genre scores, but only marginal gains in the written language features measures. Further, the development of such written discourse knowledge was not significantly impacted by the instructional context. Qualitative analysis revealed that the children’s texts demonstrated impressive advances in the written mode of organiz- ing and communicating information to others, despite evidence of traces of oral discourse patterns and immature control over diverse genres. These findings are discussed in light of relevant literacy research and practice. Literacy is not a natural outgrowth from orality. Becoming literate in our soci- ety requires that children learn to take control over the written mode of communi- cation. In order to do this, they must come to terms with certain features of written discourse: its sustained organization, its characteristic rhythms and structures, its distinctive grammar, and its disembedded quality (Kress, 1994; Olson & Torrance, 1981; Wood, 1998). While home and community are important to the development of a literate mind, it is the school that is commonly considered the most important site for children’s literacy development.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral Tradition and Book Culture
    Edited by Pertti Anttonen,Cecilia af Forselles af Anttonen,Cecilia Pertti by Edited and Kirsti Salmi-Niklander Kirsti and A new interdisciplinary interest has risen to study interconnections between oral tradition and book culture. In addition to the use and dissemination of printed books, newspapers etc., book culture denotes manuscript media and the circulation of written documents of oral tradition in and through the archive, into published collections. Book culture also intertwines the process of framing and defining oral genres Oral Tradition and Book and Culture Oral Tradition with literary interests and ideologies. The present volume is highly relevant to anyone interested in oral cultures and their relationship to the culture of writing and publishing. Oral Tradition The questions discussed include the following: How have printing and book publishing set terms for oral tradition scholarship? How have the practices of reading affected the circulation of oral traditions? Which and Book Culture books and publishing projects have played a key role in this and how? How have the written representations of oral traditions, as well as the Edited by roles of editors and publishers, introduced authorship to materials Pertti Anttonen, Cecilia af Forselles and Kirsti Salmi-Niklander customarily regarded as anonymous and collective? The editors of the anthology are Dr. Pertti Anttonen, Professor of Cultural Studies, especially Folklore Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, Dr. Cecilia af Forselles, Director of The Library of the Finnish Literature Society, and Dr. Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, University Lecturer in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. studia fennica folkloristica 24 isbn 978-951-858-007-5 00.09; 81 9789518580075 www.finlit.fi/kirjat Studia Fennica studia fennica anthropologica ethnologica folkloristica historica linguistica litteraria Folkloristica Studia Fennica Folkloristica 24 T F L S (SKS) was founded in 1831 and has, from the very beginning, engaged in publishing operations.
    [Show full text]
  • Orality, Literacy and Pedagogical Implications in Traditional African Societies: the Bakor Experience in Cross River State, Nigeria
    International Journal of African History Cultures and Traditions Vol.1, No.2, pp. 60-81, September 2014 Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) ORALITY, LITERACY AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS IN TRADITIONAL AFRICAN SOCIETIES: THE BAKOR EXPERIENCE IN CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA. Francis M. Ganyi Department of English and Literary Studies, University Of Calabar ABSTRACT: Knowledge acquisition, like all human interaction in the world depends on and is enhanced through verbal or written forms which, today, exist at parallels but are never dichotomous, yet oral cultures seem to be more pervasive than written cultures in many parts of the world. History and knowledge systems are located in memory, the personal lives, traditions and the mythical past of all communities in the world. Today, literature has commonly been associated with written forms yet most other cultures of the world, apart from western cultures, have produced a wide range of literary material all encoded in verbal or non-written genres. Oral discourses are, therefore, predominant in most indigenous communities all over the world and knowledge systems have as such been constructed and communicated through these oral discourses or verbal systems, with emphasis on graphic contextual performances. African verbal forms, perhaps, constitute the largest stock of literary material performed, sung or spoken in numerous social or ritualistic contexts. These enhance encoding of new meaning and knowledge through the transmission of ideas and in most contexts, oral or verbal communication surpasses all other forms of communication. Despite this importance of orality, the supposed supremacy of a scientific consciousness which is enhanced by writing has become coterminous with the relegation of verbal performances leading to the failure to understand the nature and function of oral literature and its pedagogical content amongst oral cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Folklore, Orality and Tradition
    Chapter-1 Introduction: Folklore, Orality and Tradition The study of folklore is inclusive of many different disciplines that overlap and intermingle with each other. Disciplines like anthropology, psychology, sociology, literary studies and women’s studies, linguistics, all come together to study the folklore in wider terms. It becomes essential to understand and analyse folk literature in the light of above disciplines to get a better understanding of the culture and history behind the given oral literature. Folklore surpasses boundaries of time in a way that it brings the culture and civilization of the past and merges it with the future for a better understanding. It continuously flows with the civilization by adopting different forms on the course of its journey. That way, it never gets struck in one time. It is not a static thing to be stored and preserved in any one form which struts itself as the ‘original. It is continuously and spontaneously being produced by the people who are blissfully ignorant of its various facets and its profound effect on the modern civilization. It is no more a thing of the rural or semi-urban masses but it is very much a part of the modern world. Many attempts have been made to define, categorize and theorize the term ‘folklore’ through words that can give it a concrete meaning. Folklore does not only include what is passed orally from one generation to another rather it encompasses everything including the cultural norms, behavioral codes, individual identities, feelings and emotions, religious beliefs, and experiences of not only a particular race or nationality but also of each individual living through it.
    [Show full text]
  • Doconst,M!Sons
    Doconst,m!sons ED 1.61 038 ( CS 204 406 AUTHOR Day, Robert, Ed.; Weaver, Gail Cohen,'Ed. TITLE Creative Writing its the Classroom: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Resources (K-12). INSTITUTION ERIC Clearinghouse on Xeaaing and Communication Skills, Urbana, Ill.; National Council of Teachers of English, Uibana, Ill. SPOONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (DHEW), Washington, D.C. PUB DATE 78 CONTRACT 400-75-0029 NOTE . 122p. AVAILABLE FROM National 'Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (Stock No. 09284, $4.75 member, $5.50 non-member) -141BS PRICE M7-$0.83 HC -$6.01 Plus Postage. DTSCRIPTORS *Annotated ibliographies; *ComposIption (Literary); *Creative Writing; Drama; Elementary Secondary -Education; Fiction; Poetry; *Resource Materials; *Teaching Techniques; *Theories IDENTIFIERS Information'Analysis-Products ABSTRACT This bibliography annotates over 700 'books and,, articles published from 1950 to 1976 that discuss the teaching of -creative writing in the elementary and secondary classroom. It'is intended to enable teachers to lotate a variety of materials to aid in planning teaching approaches and techniques and to help teachers and students pursuing studies on the teaching of creative writing to learn abcut relevant research studies and teaching trends. The entries are divided into four categories: theory (the value of Creative writing, teacher- and classroom-related factors, and research findings);yoractice (teaching the writing process, teaching poetry writing, teaching fiction aid drama writing, and materials for student-use-H--results (respondineto student- work and publishing student work); and special resources (anthologies of student work, magazines that publish student work, writing contests, and other resources).
    [Show full text]
  • The Revival of Local Fairy Tales for Children Education
    ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 336-344, May 2017 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0705.02 The Revival of Local Fairy Tales for Children Education Fathu Rahman Department of English Language Studies, Literature Hasanuddin University, Indonesia Abstract—This study explored the function of fairy tales as a means of entertainment and education for children. Fairy tales in children's literature have gradually shifted from an oral storytelling tradition to a mass media product. The role of the mother as the first and foremost teacher of her children is increasingly challenged in modern education. From pre-school age up to junior high school level, a child needs special attention from his or her parents, especially the mother. From the age of three until a child enters primary school, the parents, especially the mother, play a strategic role in fostering various aspects of development language, psychology and character. One way in which this takes place is through storytelling, however unfortunately children's literature in the form of local fairy tales often no longer has a place in the home or the kindergarten. This case study in South Sulawesi, Indonesia explored the causes behind this change. Data were gathered through interviews and questionnaires. A simple statistical method was used to analyse the data. The results show that telling fairy tales to children is still relevant and can help to instil character values in young children. Index Terms—fairy tales, children’s literature, cyber literature, moral value I. INTRODUCTION Modern children’s literature includes short stories, picture books, comics, magazines, cartoons, and poetry that can potentially be enjoyed by most children.
    [Show full text]
  • Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality, And
    BUDDHISM / SOUTHEAST ASIA VEIDLINGER (Continued from front flap) by forest-dwelling monastic orders in- “There is really nothing like this book. It addresses issues of current How did early Buddhists actually troduced from Sri Lanka in the develop- interest in Buddhist and cultural studies such as textual community, SPREADING encounter the seminal texts of their ment of Lan Na’s written Pali heritage. It literary and material culture, and the relationship between oral religion? What were the attitudes held SPREADING also considers the rivalry between those and written texts. It also brings to scholarly and public attention —— —— by monks and laypeople toward the monks who wished to preserve the older a period and area of the world that has been understudied and is THE written and oral Pali traditions? In this oral tradition and monks, rulers, and deserving of more attention.” pioneering work, Daniel Veidlinger laypeople who supported the expansion explores these questions in the context of the new medium of writing. DONALD K. SWEARER, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University of the northern Thai kingdom of Lan DHAMMA Na. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Throughout the book, Veidlinger empha- including indigenous chronicles, reports sizes the influence of changing modes of “Spreading the Dhamma is an ambitious and stimulating contribution by foreign visitors, inscriptions, and communication on social and intellectual to the study of Buddhist textual practices in southern Asia. It Writing, Orality, and Textual palm-leaf manuscripts, he traces the role life. The medium, he argues, is deeply in- should provoke further comparative research on the history of of written Buddhist texts in the predomi- volved in the assimilation of the content, writing technologies and attitudes towards writing within the Transmission in Buddhist nantly oral milieu of northern Thailand and therefore the vessels by which texts from the fifteenth to the nineteenth Pali-using Buddhist world.” have been transmitted in the Buddhist Northern Thailand centuries.
    [Show full text]
  • Exploring Modernity in African Orature: the Bena Case Study
    Exploring Modernity in African Orature: The Bena Case Study Der Fakultät für Geschichte, Kunst- und Orientwissenschaften der Universität Leipzig eingereichte D I S S E R T A T I O N zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades DOCTOR PHILOSOPHIAE (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt von Angelus Jacob Mnenuka geboren am 03. Juni 1978 in Morogoro, Tansania Leipzig, den 06. November 2017 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I officially began working on this PhD project on 1st April 2014. This dissertation appears to be accomplished by me alone. But the fact is, there is a very long list of people and institutions ‘behind the scene’ who have contributed to this thesis. This section is fully dedicated to these kinds of people. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude towards all of them. However, it would look terribly awkward if one of the following names of people and institutions would not have appeared on this page. I am grateful to the following institutions: The Republic United of Tanzania through The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) and Higher Education Students' Loans Board (HESLB) on the one hand, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) on the other for awarding me the scholarship that enabled me to study for a PhD at the University of Leipzig, Germany. I would also express my sincere thanks to my employer, the University of Dar es Salaam for granting me a four-year study leave. And finally, but not least, is the Institute of African Studies (Afrikanistik) of the University of Leipzig (Universität Leipzig) in which I spent three years and seven months doing this research.
    [Show full text]
  • World Oral Literature Project
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo OCCASIONAL PAPER SIX WORLD ORAL LITERATURE PROJECT ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LITERATURES IN AFRICAN LANGUAGES Ursula Baumgardt and Marie Lorin Published by: WORLD ORAL LITERATURE PROJECT University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3DZ United Kingdom email: [email protected] office phone: +44 (0)1223 333504 www.oralliterature.org ISBN: 978-0-9566052-5-2 © 2013 World Oral Literature Project All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the World Oral Literature Project. Design by Will Stewart www.designbyws.com Typefaces used: ekho and Myriad Pro Printed by AVMG, University of Cambridge. CONTENTS i Preface 1 Introduction 1 Why this project? 3 Objectives 4 Originality 5 Site organisation 5 Database 5 General organisation of the database 5 What is an item? 6 Encyclopaedic sections 6 Connectivity 7 Interactivity and collaborative character 7 Conclusion 8 References 8 Internet sources 9 Images PREFACE The World Oral Literature Project is an urgent global initiative to document and disseminate endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. The Project was established in early 2009 to support scholars and community researchers engaged in the collection and preservation of all forms of oral literature. The Project funds original fieldwork and provides training in digital col- lection and archiving methods. Through our series of Occasional Papers, we support the publication of research findings and methodological considerations that relate to scholarship on oral lit- erature.
    [Show full text]